Solution to Captivate SCORM course freeze issue on some LMSs

When I try to take Captivate SCORM course on some Learning Management Systems (LMS) which support both SCORM and AICC, Captivate SCORM course freezes on load with “Loading…” screen and does not move forward. This is usually seen with only few LMSs which support both SCORM and AICC. When I look at the SCORM API calls to LMS, I don’t see Initialize API being called at all. When dug deeper, I found that Captivate course was loaded as SCORM course by LMS but course was trying to make AICC calls.

The reason for this was that LMS was also sending AICC parameters in course URL though course was loaded as a SCORM course. In Captivate SCORM HTM, all the course URL parameters are propagated to Captivate SWF along with SCORM type and SCORM version. If the URL parameters contain AICC parameters then Captivate SWF tries to make AICC calls. So, solution to this problem is just not to propagate the course URL parameters to Captivate SWF. This requires simple SCORM HTM template change.

Please follow the steps described below:

1. Please go to $CaptivateInstallFolder/Templates/Publish/SCORM/1_2
2. You will find Default.htm and Custom.htm
3. Open the Default.htm file.
4. Find the following line of code:
strURLParams += (strURLParams==””?”?”:”&”) + “SCORM_API=” + g_zAPIVersion + “&SCORM_TYPE=” + g_intAPIType;
5. Change that line of code to this:
strURLParams = “?SCORM_API=” + g_zAPIVersion + “&SCORM_TYPE=” + g_intAPIType;
6. Save the html file.
7. Publish the course now and use the SCORM package on LMS.

Repeat the same steps for SCORM 2004 if required. Updated HTM template for SCORM 1.2 is attached

19 Responses

Hi Dnayak,
I followed your guide but it did not work for me. Now when I try to open the course as a student in my LMS(eFront) I just get a white screen. Nothing happens and nothing seems to be happening. The browser does not freeze, I am able to navigate freely but only white space is displayed instead of the SCO, which is normally displayed without this change(It freezes only sometimes in IE).
I also looked at your attached template to find differences between my corrected .Htm file and your template. I was unable to find a difference. Are you certain about the specifications in this post?

Thank you in advance, I will appreciate any help you can offer.
/Niklas

We created two CBT courses using Adobe Captivate 4. We used the aggregator to join several modules into one course with a TOC on the left. Our writer said she did not use SCORM. I imagine that’s true if the use was not automatic. Some of our customers have complained about the course hanging. That writer is gone. I republished the course and tried it myself – it opened just fine. Two others here tried to open it, and it hangs for them as well. I may not have the most recent Adobe Reader and others may have a more recent version of that. One person suggested that might be the problem. I’m at a loss to figure out what to do. Should I apply the code supplied by Dnayak, even though I believe we are not using SCORM??

Claudette, if the files are inside a published pdf document, then they aren’t using any LMS reporting. Perhaps the easiest way to gain some clarity is for you to share the project with us via wish-captivate (at) macromedia (dot) com. Is that something you can do? Meanwhile a series of questions to help understand the project better.

Does the project contain any quiz?
Does the project always freeze on the same slide?
Is the freezing new behavior? When did it start?
Does the project contain any custom widgets?
Does the project always freeze on the same slide or slides?
Does the project branch – use buttons or other interactive elements to navigate from one point to another?

This is still an major issue in CP 5 and CP 5.5. Always freezes only the first time with IE on the very first slide. I am using IE 9 (but happens on other IE versions as well) LMS is Moodle
There are custom widgets, but none of them do anything with SCORM. They have been delayed to load as well. There are some questions as well.

I have tried the suggestion above, however it did not work for me. I am using Learn.com (LMS). The only thing I have found to resolve the Loading… issue is to turn on the LMS customization for returning resume data, however this prevents any type of bookmarking which is also an issue. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Hi, I am having the same problem… and algo use Learn.com…but mine happens with some users specifically and this issue is not all the time. It happens when certain user access a course he has previously opened.

My courses are Scorm 1.2 , and I tried the fix for the Default.html but it didn’t work.

Did you find another solution for this? I do not want to remove the bookmarking option for the users.

We are able to publish our projects to our SCORM LMS system and they run (although a bit slow). We publish them as an .exe zip file. My question is two-part: One, we want to try to activate the right-click action by changing the .exe file to htm. If we do this, our project may not be able to fit in full screen mode which, to my understanding is the reason we published them as a .exe file.

Is there a solution to uploading the files to the LMS as a swf htm file so that we can view screen and the incorporate the right-click feature.

This “fix” does not work at least for me. I am using Captivate 5.5 IE 9 or 10. This did not occur with Captivate 4.0.
I took the time to review the deafult htm file code and comapre it to the template included above. I could not find any difference between the 5.5 version and dnayak, but I tried the template anyway. No success.
THis is a course originally created and published in Captivate 4.0 that includes a quiz imbedded in the course. The user does not have to pass the quiz (more of a status check to encourage them to review misunderstood content). Inital launch goes fine. Relaunching once completed, results in this endless loop “Loading…”.

Your project may have a different issue if this is not working for you. Is it possible for you to share your project or a sample project where this issue is reproducible. We will investigate it. Also, let me know what LMS are you using?

I have a Captivate 5.5 course for SumTotal Scorm 2004. Required to use bookmarks. After launching successfully the first time, then closing the course midway through, the relaunch gives a blank white screen. No loading, no nothing. Code for default.htm and custom.htm matches above fix so that’s not the issue. Has there been an update to this issue?